About the Film

Created in 2003, this 14 minute film playfully explores the absurdities and ironies of the reproductive rights issue in the United States. Blending found with new footage and spoofing the educational film genre, the film highlights the critical threat to choice to a new generation and galvanizes those who have benefited from over 40 years of freedom.

Playfully updating the 1950′s school documentary, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness offers up political and social satire regarding the current state of reproductive rights in a fast-paced spoonful. Found-footage, animation and original images are interwoven into a collage containing the fictional stories of a conservative politician, a young couple, and a fundamentalist activist (portrayed by Survival Research Laboratories founder Mark Pauline) along with the decline in amphibian populations and the insidious creeping erosion of reproductive rights in the United States. All linked together through a Chinese dry cleaner.

Director and co-writer Tiffany Shlain, honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century,” is an award winning filmmaker and founder and creative director of The Webby Awards. For this film she partnered with her long time collaborator, co-writer Maya Draisin, co-writer and Emmy Award winning producer Xandra Castleton, award winning designer Gil Gershoni, editor Jennifer Steinman, and music composer Mark De Gli Antoni (Soul Coughing) in this sharp, funny, intense and entertaining film.

Filmmaker Tiffany Shlain speaks around the world at a wide range of events. If you are interested in booking Tiffany, click here

Director’s Statement

This was published in 2003 when the film first came out:

Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness is a short film with expansive aspirations – to highlight the rapidly evolving threat to a women’s right to choice. It aims to galvanize both the generation of women and men who have benefited from nearly 30 years of freedom and those who remember what it was like when it was criminal and dangerous for a woman to exercise control over her own body.

I have been making films since 1991 but this is my first activist endeavor. I originally wrote the proposal to make this film for Planned Parenthood Golden Gate after my increasing concern and frustration of the erosion of reproductive rights in our country. This film is my response to our current administration’s policies.

I was born shortly before Roe v. Wade and I know that our grandmothers and mothers fought hard to give us this right to make personal decisions about our bodies. While I, along with my collaborators, were not fully engaged in the feminist activist movement before making this film, our goal was to approach this intense, polarized subject in a new way. This film is both satirical and serious. We use humor and irony to open people up to this critical subject and enlist them in the important effort that lies ahead. We hope to reach a new audience and reinvigorate past supporters to continue to fight for this right. Hopefully, my daughter Odessa Simone (4-19-03) and her generation and beyond will have this right upheld without question.